Huffy puffy panda, p.1
Huffy Puffy Panda, page 1
Huffy Puffy
Panda
Story by Eliza Teoh
Illustrated by Wolfe and Rachel Liam
Table of Contents
A Big Thank You
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Author’s Note
Praise for Ellie Belly
What Kids Are Saying About Ellie Belly
About the Author
About the Editor
About the Illustrators
Calling All Students
If You Like Ellie Belly You May Also Enjoy Robozonic!
For More Information
Copyright
For all my amazing fans, this story is for you!
– Eliza –
“To do what you love.”
Thanks Mummy and Pups
– Rachel –
A BIG thank you to all the young writers who contributed diary entries to this book:
Joyce Ng, 9, Greendale Primary School
Kaleb, Megan and Mabel Nim, 8-year-old triplets, Admiralty Primary School
Steffi Ong, 9, Edgefield Primary School
Chapter 1
Ellie was having a very busy day. All day long, she had been rushing around, gathering odd things and bringing them into her room.
Her elder sister Gabby had been watching her nervously. What was Ellie up to? She knew that it couldn’t be good. Whenever Ellie got an idea, it usually ended in:
(a) a huge mess
(b) something being destroyed
(c) getting them both into trouble
(d) all of the above
Gabby was dying of curiosity. She wanted to ask Ellie what she was doing. But she was also undecided. If she asked Ellie, it would mean that she was involved in whatever her sister was up to. And that would mean getting into trouble! She decided that, maybe, she would just take a small peek to find out.
She tiptoed quietly to Ellie’s room and peeked in the doorway. Ellie was busy at her desk, with her back to Gabby.
On Ellie’s desk was a strange assortment of items, including an apple, a bowl filled with water, several tubes of paint, a stapler, some straws, a potato, coloured paper, a bag of chips and a cap. Most worrying, there was a pile of wet tissues creating a puddle on her desk and dripping water onto the floor.
A COLLECTION
An assortment refers to a collection of different things.
Gabby was just about to scream at Ellie, but something else caught her attention. (The actual words – if she had managed to get them out – would have been: “Ellie Belly! What are you doing? What’s wrong with you, you dumbhead!”)
The thing that caught her attention was something moving under Ellie’s blanket. It was small and it was crawling around under the crumpled-up blanket. Too small to be a rabbit, so it couldn’t be Taffy, could it?
Gabby ran to the living room and peered under the coffee table. Yup, Taffy was there as usual. It was her favourite hiding place, where their little white dog, Snowy, couldn’t reach her.
Gabby then ran to the giant cage that housed their grey hamster, Nugget, and their blind guinea pig, Mr Snuggles.
Mr Snuggles was there, but where was Nugget? Nugget was gone! Ellie must have put Nugget on her bed! She was going to be in big trouble! Mama had made it very clear: No animals on the bed!
This new rule was made after Taffy did a big pee on Ellie’s bed last month and Mama had spent half an hour trying to scrub the pee stain off.
Gabby ran to Ellie’s room.
“Get Nugget off the bed! I’m going to tell Mama!” she said. Then, because she couldn’t help herself, she added, “What are you doing anyway?”
Ellie jumped in surprise and turned around. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean?” Gabby said, pointing to the desk, then to the tiny lump moving under the blanket.
“What?” Ellie said innocently.
“Is Nugget under your blanket? And what are you doing with those things on your desk?”
“Oh, these things?” Ellie said, ignoring the question about Nugget. “These are for my art lesson.”
I’m not looking!
To ignore something is to not pay attention to it, on purpose.
“I don’t believe you,” Gabby said.
“Really! Come and see the list for yourself,” Ellie said, waving her notebook at Gabby.
Gabby stepped into the room and took the notebook. There was really a list titled “Things to bring for art lesson”. The list said: coloured paper, paint, a potato.
“What on earth are you going to do?”
“Our art teacher says that we are going to do potato printing. Whatever that means,” Ellie said.
“Then why do you have those straws and that stapler? You know you are not allowed to use Mama’s stapler without her permission.”
“Oh, those? I’m not using them. They just happened to be here.”
“And the water? Why are you playing with water!? AND DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE MAKING THE ROOM WET?” Gabby was getting more and more agitated.
“Because water is fun,” Ellie said matter-of-factly. How could anyone not know that water is fun?
“And the apple? And the chips? The cap?” Gabby said as she backed out of the room. She didn’t want to be involved in Ellie’s nuttiness.
“The apple is for eating, silly,” Ellie said. She reached for it and took a big bite. “The chips and cap are for my field trip to the zoo tomorrow! Mrs Goh is taking us to see the pandas!”
Gabby rolled her eyes and sighed. When would she learn to mind her own business? She reminded herself that she must never ever again try to figure out her younger sister. She was just too weird. Also, she was really jealous. Ellie would get to see the pandas before she did! Hmph!
Right at that moment, drawn by the yummy apple smell, Nugget poked his head out from under Ellie’s blanket.
His little grey head wasn’t grey anymore. It was purple.
Chapter 2
“Ellieeeeee! What did you doooo?!”
“What?” Ellie said indignantly. “What?”
How dare you?
When someone is indignant, it means that she feels upset about being treated unfairly.
“What do you mean ‘what’?” Gabby said. She was close to hysterical. She took two deep breaths before continuing. “Nugget. Is. Purple!”
“Yah. So?” Ellie could not understand what the fuss was about. She thought purple Nugget looked cute.
“Poor Nugget. He hates it!” Gabby said.
“No, he doesn’t. He likes it. He told me,” Ellie insisted.
“How can he tell you? Hamsters can’t talk!”
“Yes, they can,” Ellie let slip. Oops! She caught herself before she said more.
Here’s a secret about Ellie that no one except her best friend Cammy knew: She could speak to animals! Really! The only thing was, she couldn’t figure out when it would happen.
But while it was true that she could sometimes understand animals, Nugget had not actually told her that he liked to be purple.
Ellie looked carefully at Gabby, wondering if Gabby would finally figure out her secret.
“No, they can’t!” Gabby said as she stomped towards Ellie’s bed.
Phew! Gabby had just assumed that Ellie was being silly as usual.
She picked Nugget up and held him up, examining him carefully. Only his head was purple, she noted with some relief.
“You better not have used a permanent marker,” Gabby said.
“Of course not. I would never do that,” Ellie said. Which was not entirely true. Just last week, she had used a permanent marker to doodle – on her bedroom floor. Mama, of course, had freaked out when she saw them.
SO FREAKY
To freak out is an informal phrase to describe someone acting in a crazy manner because he is angry, frightened, shocked or even happy.
For example:
- His mother freaked out (angry) when she saw his blue hair.
- She freaked out (happy) when she saw all her birthday presents.
“Why did you draw on the floor?” Mama had asked, trying very hard to use her calm voice.
“Why not?” Ellie had replied, genuinely surprised at how angry Mama seemed to be.
“And in permanent marker too! Do you know it can’t be cleaned off?” Mama asked very patiently.
“I know,” Ellie said, equally patiently. Wasn’t that the point? The pictures she had doodled – a misshapen pony, a flower and a house – looked very nice. Why would anyone want to clean them off?
Mama sighed and explained, “The floor is expensive. You have ruined it.”
“Oh,” said Ellie. She hadn’t known that.
“I want you to learn to think about consequences. You can’t just do what you feel like,” Mama said.
“Con-see-what?”
“Consequences. That means the result of your actions. Next time you feel like doing something silly, think twice!”
Are you sure?
When someone tells you to think twice, he is asking you to think carefully before making a decision.
“Okay,” Ellie said, even though she didn’t really understand. If she thought something was a good idea once, wouldn
“And learn some self-control. Just because you feel like doing something doesn’t mean you have to do it,” Mama said. “And if you are not sure whether you should be doing something, come and ask me first!”
“Okay, okay,” Ellie said. She really did feel bad for making Mama angry, and she promised herself that she would never use permanent markers again.
Which brings us back to Nugget. Who was purple.
“What did you use to turn him purple?” Gabby asked, stroking the fur on the top of Nugget’s head. It felt crusty and stiff.
“This!” Ellie said, holding up a stick of purple poster paint. “I read the label on the box. It said ‘non-toxic’, and I know that means it is not poisonous!”
“But why?” Gabby asked. “Why do you do things like this?”
“Because I wanted to take a photo of him looking like a rock star!”
“A rock star? For goodness sakes!” Gabby yelled. “You are a dumbhead! Don’t you know there are apps and photo-editing tools that you could have used to change the colour of Nugget’s hair in the photo? You didn’t have to actually paint Nugget!”
“Oh, I didn’t know,” Ellie said.
“Well, you didn’t ask,” Gabby shot back.
Gabby looked at Ellie and sighed. She went to her room to fetch her brand new digital camera that she had gotten as a birthday present from her father. It was the coolest camera that had all sorts of apps. You could change the colour in a photo, insert colourful and funny frames, speech bubbles and all sorts of cute images. She sat down on Ellie’s bed.
“See, I will show you how to edit a photo if you clean the paint off Nugget’s head,” Gabby said.
“Okay,” Ellie said reluctantly. “Are you going to tell Mama?”
“I won’t tell if you give me the sweets you are hiding under your bed.”
The sweets under her bed? Those were Ellie’s favourite knock-your-socks-off super-sour cola sweets. She looked at Gabby. Then she looked at purple Nugget. He looked like he was trying to scratch his head. He didn’t look that happy being a purple hamster.
“Okay.” She sulked.
“And you’d better not do anything ridiculous again!” Gabby warned.
“Okay, okay,” Ellie said.
“And if I teach you how to use this camera, will you take some pictures of the pandas for me?” Gabby said.
“Okay!” Ellie said, perking up. She would get to take Gabby’s new camera to the zoo? Cool!
Chapter 3
Ellie and her best friend Cammy were super excited about being at the zoo and seeing the pandas that had just arrived in Singapore. They were called Wan Wan and En En.
“Do you think they will talk to you?” Cammy asked excitedly as they stood at the holding area just outside the zoo’s panda exhibit, waiting for their turn.
“Shh! Do you want Megan to hear you?” Ellie said hurriedly, before turning around to give Megan the stink eye. Megan, the Little Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, was always hovering around Ellie and Cammy, listening to their conversations. The moment they said or did anything that was out of line, Megan would report it to their teacher.
Just Hanging Around
To hover means to flutter or hang in the air.
For example: The butterfly hovered over the flower.
The word hover can also be used to describe someone who is hanging around you annoyingly.
“Oops, sorry!” Cammy said. “But do you think they will?”
“I hope so!” Ellie said. She was so excited about seeing the pandas that she could hardly stand still. For once, she wasn’t the only one fidgeting. All of Class 1J was talking and giggling and getting increasingly excited.
“Is it our turn yet?”
“Why are we not going in?”
“I can see something!”
“Where?! Let me see!”
Mrs Goh, their form teacher, looked harassed. “Girls! Girls! There is nothing to see here. We are not even in the panda enclosure yet,” she said, trying to calm the girls down.
“What are we waiting for?” one of the girls asked.
“Girls, listen up!” Mrs Goh said. “We will only have 15 minutes inside the enclosure.”
“What? How come?” Ellie asked. Only 15 minutes? That was not fair! How was she going to get the pandas to talk to her in 15 minutes?
“So many people want to have a look at the pandas. This is just to make sure everyone gets a chance to see them.”
“But 15 minutes is so short!” Ellie said, frowning.
Mrs Goh ignored the complaints and went on. “You all have to be quiet and not talk too loudly, or the pandas will be bothered by the noise. So, no screaming or shouting or running. Understand?”
“Yes, Mrs Goh,” the class replied.
“Yes, Mrs Goh,” Megan replied extra loudly.
“Shh!” Ellie said to Megan. “No shouting.”
Megan put her hands on her hips and glared at Ellie. Ellie looked at Cammy and tried not to laugh. Megan was always telling people what to do. It was funny to tell her off for once.
Megan’s face turned bright red.
“You... you... you,” Megan began, but couldn’t think of anything to say. She had been shouting and she knew it. She stamped her foot, crossed her arms and turned away.
Ellie leaned over to whisper into Cammy’s ear, “Do you think the pandas will speak English? Or will they speak Mandarin, because they are from China?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about that,” Cammy said. Lowering her voice so that no one would hear, she continued, “Do the other animals you have spoken to talk to you in English?”
Ellie thought for a bit. She had so far talked to a sunbird, a kitten, a turtle, a lizard, some mice, a bat and a few frogs. Of course, she had also talked to her dog Snowy and her rabbit Taffy. And now that she thought about it, she wasn’t really sure how the animals had spoken to her.
“I don’t really think they spoke any human language,” Ellie said.
“Then how did you understand them?” Cammy asked.
“I don’t know. I just did. It is as if they put their thoughts into my head and I just understood,” Ellie said.
“I wish I could talk to animals,” Cammy said wistfully.
i wish i had that...
When you are wistful, it means you are thinking longingly about something you wish you had.
For example: He looked wistfully at his friend’s new computer.
“Me too! Wouldn’t that be fun!” Ellie said a little too loudly.
Megan turned around and waggled her finger right in Ellie’s face. “Hah! You stop shouting! I am going to tell Mrs Goh you are being noisy!”
Ellie swatted Megan’s finger away and was just about to retort when she heard a voice. A distinctly un-human voice. A distinctly animal voice! And it was coming from the panda enclosure!
A quick reply
To retort is to snap back at someone who has annoyed you.
Chapter 4
Ellie grabbed Cammy’s arm and dragged her to the side, out of Megan’s earshot.
“Ellie! What are you doing? It’s going to be our turn to go in!” Cammy said.
“Cammy, Cammy, Cammy, Cammy, Cammy!” Ellie said. She was jumping up and down like a hyperactive puppy. “Cammy, Cammy, Cammy, Cammy, Cammy!”
ACTION-PACKED
When someone is hyperactive, it means that he is overly energetic and active.
“What what what what what?” Cammy said.
“Cammy!” Ellie said, still too excited to speak.
“What?” Cammy said. Cammy was used to Ellie’s outbursts. She waited patiently for Ellie to calm down.
Ellie grabbed Cammy’s arm and leaned in to whisper. “I heard an animal. It must be the panda!”
“Really? What did it say?” Cammy was thrilled. This was really happening! They were going to talk to the pandas!
Ellie thought for a bit. “Well, it didn’t exactly say anything,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Cammy asked.
“I mean, it didn’t say anything. All I heard was mumbling.”
“Mumbling? Mumbling what?”
“Er... it sounded something like ‘grump grump hurrumph’ and ‘grrr’,” Ellie said.
“Grrr? As in angry grrr? Like I am a bear and I want to eat you kind of grrr?” Cammy asked in alarm.
